Dark Matter // Current

dark matter and white matter existence

gravity may confirm existence of parallel universes

cyman01
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3 months ago
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Channeling on Dark Matter in Physics, what is it

I attempt to channel on August 5 2009, psychic information on Dark Matter, the matter... more

revelation13
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4 months ago
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Integral Disproves Dark Matter Origin For Mystery Radiation

Another blow to the use of dark matter to explain a lot of things that astronomers... more

hcice
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4 months ago
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Mysterious Dark Matter Possibly Detected

When dark matter is destroyed, it leaves behind a burst of exotic particles, according... more

Coolidity
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8 months ago
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Did dark matter power early stars?

The first stars to light the early universe may have been powered by dark matter, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Michagan, Ann Arbor call these very first stars "Dark Stars," and propose that dark matter heating provided the energy for these stars instead of fusion. The researchers propose that with a high concentration of dark matter in the early Universe, the theoretical particles called Weakly Interacting Massive Particles(WIMPs), collected inside the first stars and annihilated themselves to produce a heat source to power the stars. "We studied the behavior of WIMPs in the first stars," said Katherine Freese and her team in their paper, "and found that they can radically alter the stellar evolution. The annihilation products of the dark matter inside the star can be trapped and deposit enough energy to heat the star and prevent it from further collapse."

The philosophy behind this research is that 95% of the mass in galaxies and clusters of galaxies is in the form of an unknown type matter, dark matter. The researchers say, "The first stars to form in the universe are a natural place to look for significant amounts of dark matter annihilation, because they form at the right place and the right time. They form at high redshifts, when the universe was still substantially denser than it is today, and at the high density centers of dark matter haloes."

The concentration of dark matter at that time would have been extremely high meaning that any ordinary stars would naturally contain large amounts of dark matter.

Dark stars would have been driven by the annihilation of dark matter particles releasing heat but only in stars larger than 400 solar masses. That turns out to be quite feasible since stars containing smaller amounts of dark matter would naturally grow as they swept up dark matter from nearby space.

The stars continued, and may still continue to be powered by dark matter annihilation as long as there is dark matter for fuel. When the dark matter runs out, they simply collapse to form black holes.

If they exist, Dark Stars should be able to be detected with future telescopes, and if found, would enable the study of WIMPs, and therefore be able to prove the existence of dark matter.The first stars to light the early universe may have been powered by dark matter,... more

Yatasha
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11 months ago
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Aiming to grasp mysterious dark matter

European satellite Gaia may reveal how dark matter is distributed in space For the... more

pjacobs51
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11 months ago
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11 comments

3 Questions: The Sun

Discovery-News.com: The Sun is the best known star in our solar system, but how much... more

DiscoveryNewsVideo
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12 months ago
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New dark energy findings suggest Einstein's theory is dead-on

"NASA held a phone-in press conference today wherein three astrophysicists reported... more

DeliaTheArtist
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12 months ago
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Study Sheds Light On Dark Energy

Discovery-News.com: New findings bolster the argument that dark energy is the reason... more

DiscoveryNewsVideo
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12 months ago
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Journey to the Edge of the Universe

In one single, epic camera move we journey from Earth's surface to the outermost... more

covelogibbs
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12 months ago
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Clump of dark matter may loom near solar system

An unexpected amount of very high energy cosmic ray electrons coming from an unknown... more

elsonwvu
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1 year ago
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12 comments

The dark matter galaxy that could be orbiting our Milky Way

A satellite galaxy made almost entirely of dark matter could be orbiting the Milky... more

Enjoy_Cannabis
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1 year ago
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Mysterious New 'Dark Flow' Discovered in Space

As if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another baffling cosmic puzzle has been discovered.

Patches of matter in the universe seem to be moving at very high speeds and in a uniform direction that can't be explained by any of the known gravitational forces in the observable universe. Astronomers are calling the phenomenon "dark flow."

The stuff that's pulling this matter must be outside the observable universe, researchers conclude.

When scientists talk about the observable universe, they don't just mean as far out as the eye, or even the most powerful telescope, can see. In fact there's a fundamental limit to how much of the universe we could ever observe, no matter how advanced our visual instruments. The universe is thought to have formed about 13.7 billion years ago. So even if light started travelling toward us immediately after the Big Bang, the farthest it could ever get is 13.7 billion light-years in distance. There may be parts of the universe that are farther away (we can't know how big the whole universe is), but we can't see farther than light could travel over the entire age of the universe.

Mysterious motions

Scientists discovered the flow by studying some of the largest structures in the cosmos: giant clusters of galaxies. These clusters are conglomerations of about a thousand galaxies, as well as very hot gas which emits X-rays. By observing the interaction of the X-rays with the cosmic microwave background (CMB), which is leftover radiation from the Big Bang, scientists can study the movement of clusters.

The X-rays scatter photons in the CMB, shifting its temperature in an effect known as the kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. This effect had not been observed as a result of galaxy clusters before, but a team of researchers led by Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found it when they studied a huge catalogue of 700 clusters, reaching out up to 6 billion light-years, or half the universe away. They compared this catalogue to the map of the CMB taken by NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite.

They discovered that the clusters were moving nearly 2 million mph (3.2 million kph) toward a region in the sky between the constellations of Centaurus and Vela. This motion is different from the outward expansion of the universe (which is accelerated by the force called dark energy).

"We found a very significant velocity, and furthermore, this velocity does not decrease with distance, as far as we can measure," Kashlinsky told SPACE.com. "The matter in the observable universe just cannot produce the flow we measure."
************CONTINUESAs if the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy weren't vexing enough, another... more

goldenways
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1 year ago
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Cosmic crash unmasks dark matter

"Striking evidence has been found for the enigmatic "stuff" called dark matter which... more

EddieStarr
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1 year ago
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12 comments

Galactic Collision Gives Researchers a Glimpse of Dark Matter

The cosmic collision of two galaxy clusters has given astronomers a clearer look at... more

jefftego
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1 year ago
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Dark matter clue from solar flares

Physicists believe that some solar flares may be caused by theoretical dark matter... more

rwylie
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1 year ago
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Scientists one step closer to understanding Dark Matter

"Findings suggest GLAST mission could detect evidence of dark matter particles.

Using one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world to simulate the halo of dark matter that envelopes our galaxy, researchers found dense clumps and streams of the mysterious stuff lurking in the inner regions of the halo, in the same neighborhood as our solar system.

"In previous simulations, this region came out smooth, but now we have enough detail to see clumps of dark matter," said Piero Madau, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

The results, reported in the August 7 issue of the journal Nature, may help scientists figure out what the dark matter is. So far, it has been detected only through its gravitational effects on stars and galaxies. According to one theory, however, dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), which can annihilate each other and emit gamma rays when they collide. Gamma rays from dark matter annihilation could be detected by the recently launched Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), which UCSC physicists helped build.

"That's what makes this exciting," Madau said. "Some of those clumps are so dense they will emit a lot of gamma rays if there is dark matter annihilation, and it might easily be detected by GLAST."

Juerg Diemand, a postdoctoral fellow at UCSC and first author of the Nature paper, said the simulation is based on the assumptions of "cold dark matter" theory, the leading explanation for how the universe evolved after the Big Bang. In a separate paper that has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal,, the researchers used their findings to make specific predictions about the gamma-ray signals that would be detectable by GLAST. The lead author of this paper is Michael Kuhlen, a former UCSC graduate student now at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J."

This could be an exciting new revelation into one of the more mysterious aspects of our universe. What do you think? Do you think scientists will confirm this theory or be stumped again by this puzzling phenomena?"Findings suggest GLAST mission could detect evidence of dark matter particles.... more